The Royals have a well-deserved reputation for failure when
it comes to converting minor league pitching prospects into major league
starting pitchers. When Danny Duffy’s your biggest success story in the eight
years since you’ve been hired…you have a problem.

Duffy’s not just the biggest success story, he’s the only success story. Since the 2007
season, 41 pitchers have started a game for the Royals. Duffy was literally the
only one of those pitchers who was signed as an amateur by the Royals after
Dayton Moore was hired following the 2006 draft.

Ventura is the second, and if he develops into a quality
major league starter, it will go a long way towards restoring the reputation of
the organization. It’s not simply that they developed a starting pitcher, but
how they did it. Ventura was not a highly-sought after teenager in the
Dominican; he got a piddling bonus, and didn’t even sign until 2008 even though
he was eligible to be signed in 2007. He threw in the mid-80s when he was
signed.

Even after he added 10 mph to his fastball, his short
stature and command issues had everyone thinking he was a reliever. Two years
ago, when he first started getting taken seriously as a prospect, most people
in baseball thought he was a future reliever. Even a year ago, there was about
a 50/50 divide between observers who thought he would stick in a rotation and
those who saw him as a closer.

But after working his way to the majors without any
degradation in his performance – his walk rate ticked up in 2012 but held
steady last year, and his strikeout rates of 28% the last two years are the
best of his career – the industry has come around to the idea that despite his
stature, Ventura might be the rare short right-hander to thrive in a major
league rotation.

And don’t wave away how rare that is. Since 1980, just eight
pitchers listed at 5’11” or shorter have struck out 100 batters (with at least
10 starts) in a season at age 23 – Ventura’s age this year – or younger:

Johnny Cueto (twice)

Tom Gordon (three times)

Tim Lincecum

Mike Hampton (twice)

Mike Leake

Pedro Martinez (twice)

Jesus Sanchez

Fernando Valenzuela (four times)

Sanchez never matched his rookie success and disappeared
from the majors quickly, but then, in the fourth start of his career he threw
147 pitches, and was one of the reasons why I developed the PAP system for
measuring pitcher abuse back in 1998. Teams are a little more sensible about
this stuff now. Okay, a lot more sensible.

But the other guys on that list all turned out pretty well,
I’d say. Gordon couldn’t hack it as a starter, but turned into a very good
closer for many years. Hampton threw 1261 innings with a 3.44 ERA through his
age 27 season before making the fatal mistake of signing a long-term contract
with the Rockies. Lincecum won back-to-back Cy Youngs and went to four straight
All-Star games before his stuff went south, and he’s still taking the ball
every fifth day. Pedro was, well, Pedro. Fernando was Fernando, and might well
have been a lot more than even that had the Dodgers not let him average 266 innings a year for six
years, from ages 21 to 26.

Cueto missed much of last season with a strained lat muscle,
but his arm was fine, and he finished fourth in the Cy Young vote in 2012. Even
Mike Leake, who’s both short and a finesse guy, has developed
into a good #3 starter and is coming off his best season.

So it appears that the hard part for short pitchers is
getting to the majors and sticking for a full season in the first place. If
Ventura can get through his rookie year intact and without losing the strike
zone, there’s no evidence that his height makes him a risk going forward. Or at
least any more of a risk than any other young pitcher.

#1: Raul Adalberto
Mondesi

Pos-B: SS-B

H-W: 6’1”, 165
lbs

DOB: 7/27/1995
(18 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($2
million signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2011

Stats:

2013: .261/.311/.361,
24-10 SB-CS in Low-A (125 G)

2012: .290/.346/.386,
11-2 SB-CS in Rookie (50 G)

I fully realize that I’m going against conventional wisdom
here – every Top 100 Prospect list I’ve seen has Mondesi behind either Zimmer,
Ventura, or in most cases both. And from the perspective of where the Royals
are at right now, I can see the argument
that Zimmer and Ventura are more valuable prospects to them – they need young
pitching and they need it now, a lot more than they need a shortstop who might
be a superstar but won’t be playing for them until 2016.

Maybe Mondesi isn’t the top prospect for the Royals. But if
you were starting a baseball team from scratch and could have one of the
Royals’ prospects, I think Mondesi is the easy choice.

He’s 18 years old. Again: he’s 18 years old. He’s already played a full season in full-season
ball, and was essentially a league-average hitter while playing a stellar
shortstop. He has tremendous baseball instincts. He has bloodlines. He
switch-hits. He plays the most important defensive position. And – in stark
contrast to Zimmer and Ventura – he’s not perpetually one pitch away from
losing it all.

But mostly, he’s 18 years old. He was the youngest player
(to my knowledge) in Royals history to play in low-A ball, and this year he’ll
be the youngest player (to my knowledge) to play in high-A ball, with the
exception of Andres Blanco, who played in five games for the Blue Rocks in 2002
at the age of 18, after the Royals jumped him all the way from rookie ball for
some reason at the end of the year. Blanco was a defensive whiz and a
legitimate prospect, but this was also the Allard Baird era, when prospects
could get called up to the majors because they had two good weeks in Double-A;
no one saw Blanco as that kind of a prospect. That same year, actually, Zack
Greinke pitched in one game for the Blue Rocks at age 18. Greinke probably
deserved to be there, but still: Allard Baird, everyone!

Mondesi could well earn a promotion to Double-A at some
point during this season, and he’ll be barely 19 when the season ends. Greinke
and Billy Butler both played in Double-A at 19, as did Clint Hurdle (who had a
monster season – he hit .328/.449/.529 in 1977, and was on the cover of SI the
following spring). Bret Saberhagen was promoted to Double-A at age 19 in 1983.
But Mondesi would be younger than any of them if he reaches Double-A at any
point this year.

Just one player in Royals history has played for them before
turning 20: Saberhagen, who was a week shy of his birthday when he debuted in
April 1984. The second-youngest was…Blanco, who was 20 years and 6 days old
when he debuted in April 2004. Seriously, Allard, what the hell? The difference
between Saberhagen and Blanco is the difference between 1984 and 2004. Anyway,
Hurdle was third-youngest (20 years, 50 days), and George Brett was
fourth-youngest (20 years, 79 days).

At this point, Mondesi has a better than a 50/50 chance at
joining the top five; if he debuts with the Royals at any point in 2015, he’ll
be on that list. If he debuts before the All-Star Break, he’ll be the youngest
player in franchise history.

Blanco wasn’t there on merit. Hurdle had a potentially great
career derailed by back injuries. Saberhagen is in the Royals’ Hall of Fame,
and Brett is in Cooperstown. Age matters. Youth is a vital asset, and Mondesi
has it in spades.

More than just his youth, the breadth of his skill set makes
it more likely that he’ll succeed. He’s consider a potential plus defender at
shortstop in the majors. He’s not a burner but has enough speed to steal 20-30
bases in the majors. He doesn’t have a ton of power but enough to hit 10-15
homers at his peak. He’s not an extreme contact hitter but isn’t a free swinger
either, and could hit .300 at his peak. Even if he doesn’t develop all of his
skills, so long as a couple of these skills reach their potential, he’ll be an
above-average shortstop in the majors. If all
of his skills reach their potential, he’s a perennial All-Star.

And while ordinarily, projecting the rosiest upside for a
player is fools’ good, that’s the thing about his age: Mondesi has so much time
to develop that it’s actually not to envision a scenario in which he does, in
fact, reach his potential in all facets of his game. And possibly even exceed
them in some ways. He doesn’t project to hit .320 right now, or hit 25 homers,
but he’s so young that he might develop in ways that scouts can’t even foresee.

Put it another way: Mondesi is ten years from reaching the traditional peak age of 27 for a
position player. He’s five years from
being a 22-year-old. In 2019 he’ll be as old as Mike Moustakas and Alcides
Escobar were as rookies. That’s kind
of nuts.

The Royals have quite literally never developed a quality
shortstop from their own farm system. The best shortstop in team history,
Freddie Patek, was acquired from the Pirates when he was 26. Patek is the only
shortstop in team history to amass even 10 bWAR in his career with the Royals.
(The second-best shortstop in Royals history, according to bWAR, is…Rey
Sanchez. No, really.) Escobar is already tied for fifth, and could easily move
into second place this year if he has a good season. Jay Bell is eighth, and he
played in Kansas City for exactly one year.

As sad as that is, none of those guys were developed by the
Royals. Here’s a list of the four best shortstops developed by the Royals:

1. UL Washington

2. Shane Halter

3. Mike Aviles

4. David Howard

I wish I were kidding. Shane
Halter is the second-best shortstop the Royals have ever produced. David Howard
is the fourth-best.

And I’m being lenient in defining “shortstop” here as anyone
who played shortstop in at least 40% of their career games. Both Aviles and
Halter would be off the list if I upped the requirement to 50%.

(I should point out that while I’ve tried to track down all
the players that the Royals traded away before they debuted in the majors, it’s
possible I missed someone. If you know of a shortstop the Royals had in their
farm system who went on to success elsewhere, please leave it in the comments.)

Suffice it to say, there’s not only a possibility but a probability that Mondesi will be the
greatest shortstop ever developed by the Royals. I’ll get into why that is in
my next column. But for now, his ability to display a broad skill set at an age
when most baseball players are still in high school makes him the best prospect
in the system. If he develops as expected, a year from now he might be one of
the best prospects in any system.

18 comments:

Ventura will, and Zimmer is likely to, contribute this season. Modesi is a solid bet as our star SS of the future. But the player I have high hopes for this year is Manaea. If, as you describe, he regains his fastball, we may have our No. 1 starter for years to come.

How many young shortstops have they moved off the position while in the minors, in an effort to get them to the major leagues sooner? I know that Brett and Frank White both entered the Royals' system as shortstops, and both were switched to other positions after Patek became entrenched in K.C. Brett as a shortstop probably would have been Jeter-esque, but White would have been a fine shortstop.

That's got to be a big part of the reason why the team has a dry spell at that spot. Plus, the fact the Royals have only been around for 45 years, and the last 20 have been pretty lousy doesn't help.

"Suffice it to say, there’s not only a possibility but a probability that Mondesi will be the greatest shortstop ever developed by the Royals." And, considering the data that you provided, one could add "the ONLY shortstop ever developed by the Royals". Kind of scary, isn't it?

I think several franchises would have similarly disappointing lists at the shortstop position, maybe not as bad (MN has Zoila and Gagne and then very little since), but close to as embarrassing, to the point where maybe developing a quality SS should be thought of as a feather in te organization's cap, rather than the failure to develop one being considered as a blight.

Better than serviceable SS are hard to find, and durable ones even more so. Running through SS in my head, I can list maybe 15 all star caliber SS since the Royals became a franchise.

First of all, Rany is incorrect. There have been two others internally-developed and signed starting pitchers start major league games for the Royals besides Danny Duffy, both in 2013:

Yordano VenturaChris Dwyer

Second, this is the same Rany that begged and pleaded with the Royals to trade Yordano Ventura, perhaps the next Pedro Martinez, for an aging Howie Kendrick. He did this begging in three separate places:

Since we have a GM who thinks the Royals "have" to trade top prospects in order to secure the last couple contract years of high quality veterans that the Royals can't afford to sign in free agency, all these prospects are at risk of Moore getting fleeced again in a deal with a smarter GM.

Also, there's a huge gap between 'better than serviceable' and All Star. Elvis Andrus is better than serviceable, but not an All Star (in my book). If I had a crystal ball and I knew Mondesi were to become exactly as good as Andrus and be ours for six seasons, that's enough for me to put him in the argument for Royals' best prospect - or at least understand someone's decision to rate him as such. If he becomes good enough to rate among the top 30% of current starting SS's, for me he's our best prospect.

I think people are missing my point. I am not disputing that a young league average shortstop isn't useful. My I am saying that if a guy who projects to be a league average SS is your farm systems top prospect you are in deep poop. For crying out loud we have been drafting at the top of the draft board since Cy Young was in kindergarten.

Where was Rany talking about someone who projects to be a league average shortstop? A shortstop who projects to hit .300 in the majors with 10-15 home runs and 20-30 steals is a long way from "league average." That's a shortstop who's 80 percent of Derek Jeter in his offensive prime, plus he can actually field the position. A very, very long way from league average.

A shortstop like that would be a consistent 4-6 WAR player, worth $15 million or more on the open market. But hey, if the Royals don't have any use for a guy who projects like that, please have Dayton call Ben Cherington and offer him to the Red Sox. Xander's going to have to move to third eventually anyway.

This post just reminds me that Mike Aviles was considerable underrated. He hasn't been a 2 war player for the last two years due to a low babip, but he was great his first year with KC when his babip was good. He's still that same player, and his defense is still above average. We would likely be a better team in 2014 with Aviles as our shortstop, at least no worse.

I'm not saying Aviles was great, but he's just as good as what we got. And we spent a Zack Greinke on Alcidies Escobar.